Mr. Edward Gibbon's Unending Torture
A Rant in Multiple Parts
I just finished reading Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire Abridged in Two volumes. There
are multiple problems with that sentence, but let’s start with the most obvious
one. Given that the book is 1148 pages long how on earth is it abridged? What
monster would take longer than 1148 pages to write about the Fall and Decline
of the Roman Empire? Secondly, it is in two volumes. At first I believed the
book was 577 pages long, as that was what the page count of the first volume
was, but after a bit I realized that the second link below the one I typically
clicked wasn’t just another format, but was instead the second half of this
unending monstrosity. Reader take heed: if you are ever in the position where
you can split up your unending tortourous
book into two volumes or leave it in one, leave it in one as you can at
least give your poor victims the relief that when they are done, they are truly
done. Instead, I had to suffer through the first volume and only find minimal
relief with its completion and then go through the whole process again in the
second volume. Mercifully the second voume was shorter than the first but only
by 7 pages.
Repetitiveness
The next immediately clear problem
with Mr. Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire Abridged in
Two Volumes is that "fall" and "decline" are SYNONYMS. This initial mistake in the
titling of the book is emblematic of a much more pervasive problem throughout
Mr. Gibbon’s vicious saga. He is too repetitive. Instead of giving a few
words, he rambles on and on for sentences easily becoming sidetracked in
detailing the history of a roman rival instead of getting on with his main
point. One of his favorite phrases throughout the agonizing wordy torture is
“the purple”. At first it struck me as an elegant way to refer to the head of
rome without being too redundant, but he quickly beat the purple black and blue
as he hammered away with the phrase every 5 or so pages for the entire 1148
page book.
River Wide or Valley Low
Now some people might take issue
with my complaint of The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire Abridged in Two Volume’s length because the death of the roman empire has multiple parts and it’s
easily possible to go into great detail about all the twists and turns along
the way. Plus, there are multiple possible points in time where the empire could
be said to have fallen. This is true. When did Rome start to fall? When did it
finish falling? Is it with the fall of the eastern empire or the western
empire? Should the Holy Roman Empire be considered part of the long fall of
Rome?
Mr. Gibbon clearly didn’t want to offend
anyone with his excruciatingly painful history and so he included everything
from 98 AD to 1590 AD. Naturally, as a result of this focus on breadth rather than depth,
Gibbon ends up not having enough time to actually go into anything resembling a
narrative. Instead he takes on an objective reciting tone as he relentlessly marches down
the years. Nonetheless, what Gibbon lacks in narrative, he attempts make up for
with a plethora of inconsequential details. Why in
How About You?
I don't mean to insinuate you would ever read this book. The only redeeming thing is the challenge itself, but even that is questionable. Have you ever read a book like Mr. Edward Gibbon's The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire? What would you have done if faced with this monster on your own classics list? Have you ever been tortured at the hands of a paperback? I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! I'll be explaining why I put myself through this book in another post.
Notes:
Sources:
Image Credit:
Original Image: Portrait, oil on
canvas, of Edward Gibbon by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Edit: By Me
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